by K. A. Tucker
My attention shifted from the vial—a powerful weapon that the Fates must have played a part in creating—to the girl. Her trembling knees knocked together and she wrung her hands, clenching and unclenching her fingers constantly, clearly terrified. And her young age made her practically useless to Viggo; she would have just learned how to find the magic threads within herself, and she would have few spells in her repertoire—and no idea how to bend the laws of physics to create new spells. There was no hard and fast set of rules around sorceress magic. It took years of experimentation; the more cautious witches never truly figured it out. And this witchling was weak, judging by the tiny glow of magic radiating from her. The smug fool in front of me didn’t know that, though.
“Viggo. She can’t break the Merth’s curse. She can’t get Veronique out. She can’t undo anything I’ve done. So let her mother go,” I pleaded. The child would be lucky to tie her own shoes with her magic.
“Gladly! As soon as you release Evangeline.” Viggo turned to the young witch. “This is Sofie. This is all her fault, you know.”
The young witch turned to regard me, contempt flashing in her eyes. I sighed heavily. Great. Yet another enemy within these walls, thanks to Viggo.
“I hope you’re not planning on having her toy with magic,” Mage called, “considering we have a truce.”
“Yes, I recall Sofie couldn’t use her magic, right?” Viggo answered, smiling. “Sofie,” he repeated. Mage’s lips tightened, his emphasis not lost on her. “Ileana is not Sofie. I have done nothing to break our agreement. And what was that other part? Oh yes, no killing of anyone. That includes Ileana, here.”
“She killed Tanner!” Mage threw back, glancing over at the corpse on the cobblestones.
“In self-defense! You can’t hold that against her!” Viggo was testing her honor, seeing if she would back out of the truce she’d imposed. It was silly, really; she could tear both Viggo and this witchling to shreds in seconds, if she chose. But from what I could read of Mage—which wasn’t a lot—her honor, or the impression of her honor, held sway.
Her mouth twisted and she nodded, and I knew Viggo had won.
“If her magic causes anyone any harm, I will strike her down.” I glared at Ileana. “Dead.”
“Agreed! She’s not here to harm anyone!” Viggo exclaimed, throwing an arm proudly over Ileana’s shoulder. She remained rigid, terror-filled eyes looking everywhere but at me now.
With an angry shake of my head, I turned and stalked off.
The glass panes of the French door rattled as I slammed it. I marched straight over to study Veronique’s portrait, as I did every time I stepped foot inside the grand mahogany-and leather-filled parlor. “I hope you’ll understand, Veronique,” I whispered, anticipating the tales painting me as a wicked sister that those two monsters would spin. And she’d likely believe them. As lovely and sweet as my sister was, no one would ever have described her as clever.
I heaved an exhausted sigh. For over one hundred years, I had waited for the Fates to fix this mess and release my baby sister from her tomb. And then, for the last eighteen years, I had spent my days in a bipolar balance of bliss and dread as I watched Evangeline grow up, knowing what I had brought down on her, what my deal had condemned her to. I was exhausted, tired of the magic, of the unknown, of the constant fighting with Viggo and Mortimer, of the hatred boiling inside of me. I hadn’t always been so angry.
Yes, I had a temper—Nathan had always been quick to point that out. I was his fiery redhead. But that fire had evolved into rot, deep within my core. The only saving grace, the only reason the rot hadn’t fully consumed me, was Evangeline. And I would lose her if I didn’t get that damn pendant off her, something I could not for the life of me figure out how to do. Each day I poked and prodded the boundaries of the spell’s weave inside my head, delivered to me by the Fates in a hard, marble-sized packet of magic. But it was impenetrable.
And if that wasn’t enough, now I had the fate of Earth on my shoulders. How would I manage to keep the end of the human world at bay when I couldn’t even control the mess within these Fifth Avenue walls? For God’s sake, I had just unwittingly helped Viggo bring in the enemy! A useless witch, but an enemy, nonetheless.
I pressed my fingertips against my temples, trying to ease my tension. I needed to focus on the more immediate task, the one I could handle: an update for Leo. He needed to know about the Sentinel and the truth of this parallel world. But more importantly, I needed to know how my Evangeline was coping.
Opening my mind up to the portal into Leo’s mind, one of the simplest yet most useful spells I had designed over all my years, I reached out, following my mind’s eye as it sailed down the long, blue-tinged tunnel to the link in Leo’s head. The link I had planted the night I healed his wife. At the time, I had no specific plans for him; I just recognized an opportunity to call on a favor in the future, if needed. Boy, had I ever taken advantage of my dear friend Leo’s debt to me!
I reached the portal in the old warlock’s head within seconds. Oddly enough, it looked like a solid little wooden door at the end of a tunnel. I prodded at it, and sensed it open. How is Evangeline? I sent in greeting. And then I sensed something slither up behind my message. Like a tiny anchor affixed to my words, something was trailing them there, through the tunnel, to Leo. An invader.
I slammed the portal shut and sailed back into my own head, forcefully breaking off the communication before Leo could send out a probe to reply. Someone had tagged onto my message! Few had the skill to pull that off. There were only two possibilities within these walls: the five thousand-year-old vampire who had powers I couldn’t grasp yet, or the meek witchling who couldn’t meet my gaze. Both seemed impossible. Either way, someone would pay.
With shock and rage driving each step, I crashed through the French doors to the atrium, unwilling to take the time to open them. Shards of glass and wood flew in every direction. I didn’t even flinch.
Only a few Ratheus vampires remained in the atrium. The rest, including Caden and friends, were either chasing the blood to the cellar or hiding out—away from the new witch, no doubt. Mage was nowhere in sight. I marched over to where Viggo and Ileana stood. The little witch-girl slipped behind him, her guilty eyes going wide. I had my answer. Her? Seriously? That tiny wisp of a thing, her magic immature and weak? How?
“Oh! I forgot to mention,” Viggo began, his chest puffing out, “Ileana is something of a genius in her circles—decades ahead of where she should be, and extremely powerful.” He reached over to lift the chain of her necklace. “This thing serves a dual purpose; it masks the power of her magic.” He smiled knowingly at me. “I thought it best. I didn’t want you feeling threatened by a witch more powerful than you in here.”
So I wouldn’t suspect her of being able to tap into my communication spell. His words only fed my rage. I stalked toward her, my intentions likely clear as day in my blazing eyes. Had she been able to locate Leo through her probe? No, it would appear not. Viggo and Mortimer would be furiously dialing coordinates to rush their henchmen to Siberia at this very moment.
“Now Sofie,” Mortimer began, stepping forward.
“What? You’re on his side now?” I spat.
“I’ve never been on Viggo’s side,” he answered bitterly. “I’m on Veronique’s side. Unlike you, it would seem.”
My words caught in my throat with that comment. When I spoke again, my voice was even and cool. “So, Viggo, you seem to have found someone who can tap into communication spells. How clever of you. And quick.” My eyes darted over to Ileana’s face, peeking out from behind Viggo’s broad shoulder. What else could she do? I knew she couldn’t undo the tomb spell without the pendant, so Veronique wasn’t going anywhere. I was pretty sure she couldn’t unwind the Merth I had so intricately woven through these walls in an impenetrable barrier. But I wasn’t a hundred percent sure anymore.
“What can I say, Sofie? You’re the one who gave me the idea when you said I’d
have to pry it from your head!” Viggo replied with a smug grin. “So, you’ve been keeping close ties to Evangeline through that bastard traitor.”
Fool, I silently admonished myself. But there was nothing I could do about it now, except not allow it to happen again. “Lucky I caught on so quickly,” I murmured.
Viggo’s mouth twisted with displeasure. “Yes, well . . . I guess you’ll have to cut all communication to Leo now, won’t you?”
I struggled to keep my expression calm as panic hit me. He was right. I had to sever my link with Leo, which meant with Evangeline. I would have no way of checking up on her, of knowing how she was doing. And Leo wouldn’t send any messages my way now. He would have sensed me shutting down that connection so abruptly, and I had strictly instructed him not to reach out if he sensed anything “off.” How long before I could connect with him again?
Viggo and I squared off, his smug smile of satisfaction inciting in me the urge to claw off his face. He needed to pay. I wanted him to hurt. I never could punish him before, on account of Evangeline. That wasn’t an issue anymore.
I didn’t have a vampire’s strength that would match the two thousand-year-old vampire, but I had my magic. Magic that could shatter every bone in his body at a steady rhythm that gave them enough time to almost heal properly before rebreaking—over and over again. I felt the evil grin stretch across my face as I glared at him. His cobalt eyes grew cautious, likely glimpsing my intentions, wondering if he had pushed me past my breaking point.
But first, I needed to establish the pecking order. I turned to regard Ileana. “Rest assured, you won’t have another opportunity. And if you try anything on me again, you will die a painful death.”
“I don’t think you are in any position to threaten such a powerful sorceress,” Viggo began, adding sarcastically, “especially with our iron-clad truce.”
But Mage isn’t here right now, is she. I met his warning with a sadistic smile. “You want to see powerful?” I murmured. I had always been a powerful sorceress, even before transforming. Since then, though, my magic had compounded a hundredfold. These two idiots had no idea what I was capable of. It was time they found out.
I raised my hands and thousands of bolts of purple magic shot out of me in every direction with a ferocity I had, until now, hidden from them. Glass exploded from every window and door. Five stories of balconies came crashing down, the concrete and brick pounding the cobblestones and gardens into dusty heaps, sending the Ratheus vampires scuttling for cover. Every plant and flower previously untouched now shriveled. With a flip of my wrists, entire rows of cobblestones tore themselves out of the ground and spun in a tornado-like funnel before torpedoing in all directions. In only seconds, I transformed Viggo’s cherished atrium into a war zone. Only Veronique’s statue and the glass ceiling enclosing the atrium remained unscathed.
Viggo and Mortimer may not have understood the power behind the apocalyptic destruction, but Ileana certainly did; her face paled to a corpse-like pallor. Let that be a warning to you, little girl. “I am in exactly the position I need to be,” I said evenly, then focused on my sister’s vying suitors, “and while I can’t kill you two for my sister’s sake, I can certainly make every day you wait for her a living hell. And those days will stretch for a long, long time if you get in my way again.”
Mortimer had the decency to remain quiet. But Viggo tutted and added, “Temper, temper.”
Strangling a cry of fury, I whirled and stalked off toward the red doors, before I burned him where he stood. Mage was waiting for me in the doorway. Damn it! Of course my destruction of the atrium wouldn’t go unnoticed. I held my hand up as I walked past her. “I know! I’m sorry. It was an exception. None of it was directed at anyone. I needed to prove a point. There will be no more.” I hoped my brush-off would be enough to mollify her. No such luck.
“It’s unsettling, wouldn’t you say?” she observed, her voice soft. “Someone probing your brain, looking for information?” Clearly she had heard the entire confrontation.
“Can you blame me?” I continued up the stairs.
She said nothing in response.
“If she does it again, she’s dead,” I warned with conviction as I threw open the red doors, adding stubbornly, “And no truce will hold me back. I don’t care what you do.”
“I would help you.”
Her words stopped me, not so much because they came as a surprise as because they seemed suspiciously truthful. They left me believing I could trust her, something I knew I most certainly could not. I turned to face her, towering over her petite frame even though I was of average height. “Is there something else you need?”
My tone didn’t seem to bother her. “You had troubles getting the blood?”
Troubles . . . I groaned as my palm flew up to my forehead. With the witchling and the tap into my head, I had forgotten about that disaster. I was dealing with so many different messes, my head spun. “Yes, yes. Of course.” Mage needed to know. I wondered if the attack was on the news already. She joined me and we walked side by side into the building, me detailing the grim reality that was unfolding to my untrustworthy new ally.
4. Enemies and Allies
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,” Leo recited in a startlingly authentic American accent as we watched the movie credits roll on the flat screen, the reflection glinting off the window glass against the backdrop of night. It was after eleven now, but darkness had fallen many hours ago. “Casablanca is my favorite movie, you know,” he added with the excitement of a child arriving at a fair.
You don’t say? Max muttered from his spot on the floor beside the sectional I shared with Julian. The sarcastic comment earned a snicker from me before I could stifle it. It was the fourth time Leo had made that announcement.
“I can’t believe I’m only seeing it now,” I said as I leaned over to grab another fistful of buttery popcorn from the ceramic bowl. I stole a glance at Julian and caught his eyes on me. I smiled. He smiled back but said nothing. He seemed tired. His olive complexion hadn’t completely returned yet.
We had spent the entire day in the great room, sprawled out on either side of the gray sectional couch as Julian recovered from his near-death trek. The servants quietly swept through several times during the day to bring snacks and hot drinks, which we readily accepted, Julian surprising me with the manners of a well-trained schoolboy. Otherwise, no one said two words to us.
After I had divulged the secrets behind my connection to the vampires, Julian must have felt the need to reciprocate, because he gave me a summary of his life, from his early grade school days in Colombia to his American all-boys private school to being accepted into Harvard medical school just this year. It was a fairly normal—if privileged—life for the son of a Colombian drug lord and slave-monger and it helped strengthen my sense of connection with my human companion in this isolated part of the world. We may have come from very different backgrounds, but we were equally confined by vampires.
As the day progressed and Julian’s chattiness waned, I plugged in one of the seven hard drives sitting beside the forty-two inch plasma screen. No one could say Sofie hadn’t prepared for years of entertainment. We settled on a marathon of goofy sitcoms and movies. Julian and I seemed to have the same tastes in shows. That was a good thing, given we would likely be watching a lot of them together.
It was dinnertime when Leo resurfaced from his room, his skin chalky, supporting himself on the furniture as he shuffled into the great room. In a burst of energy, Julian sprang from the couch to rush over and pull out a chair at the dining table for the old man, then offered to fetch some of Magda’s delicious broth, if the beef goulash was too heavy. His attitude toward Leo had changed drastically since the old warlock had saved his life. Watching the exchange quietly from my nook on the couch, I smiled. Perhaps living here together would work after all.
“Oh, I’m not surprised it took being exiled to the middle of nowhere
by a vampire for you to sit down and watch this classic. You young folks and your MTV and video games—or whatever the newest thing is,” Leo muttered as he pointed the gray plastic remote at the television and shut it off. “No appreciation for the arts.”
He struggled to rise from his chair. Julian threw his blanket off and slid for his corner of the couch to rise and reach for Leo’s arm, but Leo waved him off, adding grumpily, “I’m not a geriatric!” Julian flinched as if struck. “But thank you for your concern,” Leo quickly added, his tone more civil.
The old Irishman managed to get to his feet and hobbled over to the fire. “Can’t seem to keep the warmth in this drafty place,” he murmured as he leaned over to grab a log, bracing his other hand on the stones of the fireplace. Testing the weight of the log, he changed his mind and grabbed a smaller log. With some effort, he heaved it into the fire.
A twinge of worry nagged at me, seeing such crippled movements where only days ago he’d been a spry seventy-eight-year-old, practically bounding around. It was as if he had aged twenty years overnight. The exertion required for that spell to transport me here, followed by healing Julian, was proving too much for him. He should be resting. “Leo, why don’t you just use your magic for the fire?” I suggested.
He chuckled. “I enjoy stoking the fire.” He demonstrated by poking the logs with the iron prod to kindle the flames. “And if I used my magic for everything I could, rigor mortis would have set into this old corpse by now.”
Leo a corpse. Dead. The very thought brought a pang of grief to my stomach. He was my ally, my magical guardian, along with Max. More, I felt a strange kinship to him, finding his sympathetic pats and gentle nods so . . . grandfatherly. I had never met my grandfather. I had no idea what it was like to have one. Yet, if I closed my eyes and tried to picture my mother’s father, Leo’s weathered, smiling face was the first to appear. I couldn’t have him dying while protecting me. Maybe Sofie could heal him . . . if I could just get her here, somehow. “Have you heard anything more from Sofie?”